Quote

But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.

Anna Akhmatova

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Anna Akhmatova
Age: 76 †
Born: 1889
Born: June 23
Died: 1966
Died: March 5
Author
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Poet
Translator
Writer
Odesa
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
Anna Achmatova
Anna Ahmatova
Anna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
Made
Blow
Reckoning
People
Tears
Scarcely
Friend
Survivor
Proud
Cloud
Single
Passings
Straighter
Left
Surely
Conflagration
Anything
Passing
Flinch
Without
Clouds
Survivors

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In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me . . . and asked me in a whisper . . . Can you describe this? And I said: I can.
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Forgive me, that I manage badly, Manage badly but live gloriously, That I leave traces of myself in my songs, That I appeared to you in waking dreams.
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My shadow serves as the friend I crave
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Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all.
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As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.
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Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.
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A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me.
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The secret of secrets is inside me again.
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I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.
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I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.
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Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.
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Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.
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I am not one of those who left the land to the mercy of its enemies. Their flattery leaves me cold, my songs are not for them to praise.
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Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.
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And this tenderness was not like That which a certain poet At the beginning of the century called true And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all— It rang out, like the first waterfall, It crunched like the crust of bluish ice And it prayed with a swanlike voice, And it broke down right before our eyes.
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The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias.
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We are all carousers and loose women here How unhappy we are together!
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I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.
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